CVS to debut more health services after Aetna deal

After its $69 billion acquisition of Aetna is finalized, CVS plans to introduce more health services, including chronic disease management, at select drugstores, according to CNBC.

CVS will open these concept stores early next year in an effort to improve health services and outcomes for patients at a lower cost.

The pilot sites will focus on several ways to manage costs, including optimizing and extending primary care and managing common chronic conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, asthma and behavioral health. The sites may look at reducing avoidable readmissions by combining Aetna's clinical programs with CVS stores and helping to improve outcomes for patients with kidney disease.

"We're making the consumer experience, which will be an increasingly important competitive differentiator, and we are hard at work creating a plan to differentiate CVS Health in these patient journeys with the goal of making them simpler and more personalized while making care more accessible," CVS CEO Larry Merlo told CNBC.

CVS will pilot these programs at the initial concept stores to determine which are most effective and scalable across the retail pharmacy's locations. Currently, CVS has about 10,000 stores and 1,100 MinuteClinics across the U.S.